One type of aquarium that developed over time is the marine aquarium, built for housing marine plants and animals. The primary difference between marine aquaria and freshwater aquaria is the saltwater environment that must be maintained in a marine aquarium. Marine aquaria hold various fish, marine invertebrates, and other organisms that are important in scientific research and as a part of the hobby for aquarists. Hence, much innovation surrounds the improvement of marine aquaria, and presently the chemical condition of an aquarium can be precisely maintained for the more sensitive marine organisms that may be housed there.
Common measurements indicative of the chemical condition of the liquid environment in a marine aquarium include temperature, specific gravity (generally maintained between 1,020 and 1,026), salinity (a measure of the NaCl content of the water, generally maintained between 20 and 32 parts per thousand), pH (a measure of the hydrogen ion content of the water, generally between 8.1 and 8.3) and carbonate hardness (or carbonate alkalinity) (generally between 8 and 12 degrees KH). Other conditions that may be tested include calcium levels, alkalinity, iodine levels and other trace materials. In addition, ammonia from organism waste and decaying matter is constantly being converted to nitrite and nitrate, and every aquarium has a different level of biological loading.
Because of differences in these and other water parameters, the environment varies from aquarium to aquarium. This presents a problem when a fish or other type of animal or plant are sensitive to subtle changes in environment, and need to be transported from one aquarium to another. As we are an increasingly mobile society, many individuals and families relocate for work, school, or family. Oftentimes the marine animals and plants must make the move as well. The move will oftentimes entail a first move to a temporary moving or transport tank, and a second move to the new destination tank. Perhaps most importantly, whenever a fish is purchased the same transport steps must occur.
The shock experienced by the animal, due to sudden changes in water condition can cause grave injury, long-term illness, or death, and worse, it can occur in a matter of seconds. The loss of the organism is not only emotionally and financially detrimental to the owner, but it can have an impact on the greater ecosystem as well, since to lose such organisms in captivity increases the demand on such organisms harvested from the wild, and consequently the environmental damage resulting from such harvesting.
To prevent such injuries, the original source water is often kept with the fish during transport. If the environment to which the fish is transported is not composed only of the source water from which the fish was taken, there will be some degree of mixing, and some degree of an environment change for the fish to withstand. To minimize the acclimation stress, as much of the source water as is practical is taken to the new location. Additionally, the new environment's parameters are often matched as closely as possible to the source environment. The four parameters generally recognized as most important are temperature, salinity, alkalinity and pH.
Generally, the new environment cannot be exactly matched to the old. To further prevent injuries due to shock, fish should be slowly acclimated to their new environment so that the change is gradual and tolerable.
Methods and devices have been employed to further reduce the risk of shock to fish during transport from a first environment to a second. The traditional and most common method involves floating a container, generally a plastic bag in which the organism was transported, for a period of up to one hour in the new aquarium. This allows the water temperature inside and outside the bag to equilibrate. Water from the tank is then added to the bag in a slow, stepwise manner until the water within the bag more closely matches the water in the new aquarium. The fish are then removed from the bag and placed in the new environment. This method is often satisfactory, but requires a fair amount of work on the part of the person relocating the fish, and still subjects the fish to stepwise changes that may be stressful. It is not an ideal method, and many animals and plants are harmed and eventually die due to this inadequate method.
An improvement upon the technique outlined above is similar, except the step-wise addition of water is replaced with the slow siphoning of water through small caliber tubing. The aquarium water is dripped into the bag at a very slow rate, measured in drops per minute. This allows water from the new aquarium to slowly mix with water in the transport bag. This technique is not without its drawbacks either. There is high risk of overflowing the transport container if it is left unattended, resulting in a damaging spill of salt water and possible loss of the fish. It is also difficult to assess the proper flow rate for the siphon, which can lead to overly fast changes in water parameters.
Several devices have been disclosed that also attempt to address these problems. U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,909 (Spivak) discloses a plastic device comprising multiple separate chambers into which water and the fish from the source aquarium are placed. The device is then placed along an inside wall of the new aquarium. A quantity of water is poured into a separate chamber on the device. Then, via a valve, water from the separate chamber is allowed to slowly enter the chamber containing the marine organism being relocated. Once the gradual dilution of source aquarium water is complete, and the temperature has equalized to that of the water in the destination aquarium, the device may be opened to allow the inhabitant to swim out.
Spivak operates similarly to the second technique described above, and suffers from some of the same drawbacks. Additionally, this technique allows water from the source aquarium to mix with water from the destination aquarium. Mixing of this sort is generally avoided by aquarists because it increases the chance that pathogens may enter the destination aquarium. Additionally, the device is large and bulky and may not fit on many aquarium installations. Finally, the device requires user input in operating the valve, increasing the chance for error. Acclimation by stepwise introduction of water is disclosed again in U.S. Pat. No. 6,640,749 to Monnier, Pub. No. U.S. 2009/0107409 discloses a transfer bag with a window of a dialysis membrane. A slow seepage of aquarium water into the bag acclimates the fish slowly.
What is needed in the art is a safe, rigid transport container that slowly acclimates new animals and plants into an aquarium without letting any water from the transport container enter the aquarium.
The present invention meets this need with a plastic transport container that attaches to the aquarium. A double siphon adds water from the aquarium into the transport container and then once mixed is removed at the same rate into a waste water drain. The rate of acclimation can be fine tuned with a control valve, and the system can be left unattended until complete exchange of the waters. After a period of time, all the water within the transport tank would be completely exchanged with aquarium water, completely eliminating the stress of a stepwise exposure of the animal or plant.